Founders’ tale

Sarah Whelan (center) in a 1998 producion of Temp Slave, the first musical to play at the Bartell.

When Sarah Whelan moved to Madison in 1970, the city’s community theater groups were without a home, performing in schools, churches and local businesses. “We were all in different locations wherever we could perform — anywhere and everywhere,” Whelan says.

Now Madison’s theater grand dame will be playing herself — on a stage she helped establish. Whelan, who just turned 80, was one of the founders of the Bartell Theatre more than 20 years ago.

The story of the theater is being adapted by Brendon Smith and Suzan Kurry into a play titled From Awkward Spaces: The Story of the Bartell and the Journey to Permanence. The plot recounts how Whelan and leaders of other Madison theater groups — Tom Haig (played by Barry Levenson), Gretchen Wheat (Anna Hahm), and Leo (Bob Moore) and LeeAnn Cooper (Kathleen Tissot) — founded a home, just off the Capitol Square, for six Madison community theater groups in 1994.

Whelan, a theater veteran of a half century, plays herself in the upcoming production marking the theater’s anniversary.

Whelan estimates she’s taken part in 100 productions in Madison, including TV and radio, as part of a lifetime total that includes more than 300 productions. She also performed in her previous homes in Texas, Michigan and Louisiana. She’s taken on acting, singing, stage managing and everything in between.

“There’s a push for [finding one’s ancestry] today and this is the genetics of theater in Madison,” Whelan says. “There is some poetic license involved, but it’s mostly right. People come from all over the country to perform in Madison, and they should know that Rome wasn’t built in a day,” she adds.

Tired of using classrooms and basements as makeshift dressing rooms — often tearing down sets after each show and rebuilding them the next day — the theater companies jointly leased-to-own a home base at the former Esquire Theater, a defunct movie theater. They removed 700 seats, salvaged the 300 that were in the best condition and hand-washed the upholstery before reinstalling them. The balconied movie house was converted into a two-level, two-stage space.

They named their new home after Gerald A. Bartell, Madison theater legend and arts supporter.

“He was a close friend of Tom’s [Haig’s] and he was big in theater and we thought well, why not? And besides that, ‘Bartell’ fits exactly where ‘Esquire’ would fit,” Whelan says.

It didn’t take Whelan much to get into character for Awkward Spaces, besides checking old photos for the color of her hair at the time — white, as it is now.

In addition to acting and working behind the scenes at the Bartell, Whelan has served as president of both the Madison Theatre Guild and Strollers Theatre, the latter named for their frequent relocations. A co-founder of Mercury Players Theatre, Whelan also helped create the Encore Studio for the Performing Arts, one of the only theater groups in the country for people with disabilities. Whelan says the quality of theater available in Madison is part of what makes the city special.“Art enriches life,” she says. “Seeing theater opens people up to other forms of art.”

The production of From Awkward Spaces,a fundraiser for the Bartell Theatre Foundation, runs Aug. 17-19. For more information, visitbartelltheatre.org.